If you live in Southeastern Indiana, you need to know about this. They’re trying to bulldoze homes and property in order to build a new highway connecting Markland Dam to US 50. If this is successful they’re planning on adding a new bridge to Kentucky and they’re hoping to make a continuous highway to Canada, so this happens, it will affect the entire state, and the nation.
They say it’s for freight purposes, but reports have been found that it will only save truckers from six to fifteen minutes. The proposed routes will also require new lights/signage, will make traffic worse, we will have a new road that will deteriorate away because we don’t have enough money to fix our current roads, and with a new highway, we’ll get more billboards. It ruins the landscape and will only contribute to the destruction of our environment.
One of the state senators involved with the project is CEO of Maxwell Construction. He wasn’t elected, he’s taking over because Chip Perfect resigned after one year and endorsed him.
One proposed route would cut a farmer’s property in half and require him to drive 30 miles to go around the highway and get to the other side of his farm.
I haven’t seen this get any attention beyond the local level, but it’s important that people know this is happening in our state. There’s a group on Facebook for efforts dedicated to stopping construction and if you’re local, there are tons of places you can go to sign petitions.